


all this, and love too, will ruin us

by procrastinatingbookworm



Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer & Related Fandoms
Genre: (for magic/ritual purposes), Chas Chandler and the Consequences of Being An Emotional Doormat, Domestic, Fighting From Within, How Do I Tag, I'll Explain Later, John Constantine and the Consequences of Misusing Magic, Lord of the Flies References, M/M, Magic, Magus Constantine and the Consequences of Being a Stuck-Up Bastard, Parallel Universes, Possession, Post-Canon, References to Comic Lore, Rituals, Self-Harm, Temporary Character Death, Thanksgiving, The Magus - Freeform, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21578368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: John performs a taxing annual ritual to purge himself of the more negative effects of using (and misusing) magic. Something goes wrong.(Title fromScheherazadeby Richard Siken)
Relationships: Chas Chandler & John Constantine, Chas Chandler/John Constantine, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84





	1. You'll never make me leave, I wear this on my sleeve

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter title from _Thank You For The Venom_ by My Chemical Romance)

Chas made Thanksgiving dinner. 

John didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and neither did Zed, so Chas would have gone to Renee’s parents’ house for Thanksgiving, as usual, if Renee hadn’t informed him that he had no reason to show up, shy of sheer masochism.

Chas’d had to force himself not to make a joke about masochism being more John’s thing.

So, on Thanksgiving afternoon, Chas’ sort-of family gathered at the dinner table, eating the classic Thanksgiving meal that Chas had prepared instinctively, to only mild appreciation.

John, who clearly had something on his mind, picked at his food for a few minutes before sliding his plate away and looking up.

“You need to clear out for a few days, Zed.”

Zed looked up from the sweet potato casserole she had been suspiciously dissecting and set her fork down. “Why?”

“There’s this ritual I’ve got to do. It’d wreak havoc on your empathetic senses.”

Chas winced. He knew the ritual John was talking about.

“You can go with her, mate.”

Chas didn’t dignify that with a response. He speared a piece of turkey with his fork and put it in his mouth, chewing slowly and deliberately.

Zed glanced between them, her eyes narrowed. “What’s the ritual for?”

“Simplistically, it clears magical channels.” John shrugged. “Magic builds up when you use it, especially when you use it like I do.”

“Recklessly,” Chas cut in, unable to help himself. “With a side of overconfidence and disrespect.”

“Cheers to you too, mate.” John said, his hands disappearing into his coat pockets.

Chas cleared his throat.

John withdrew his hands, empty, and rested them sheepishly on the table.

Zed rolled her eyes. “How is this different from any of the weird rituals you  _ do _ subject me to?”

John sucked his teeth. “It’s a bit messier.”

“You cover yourself in pig blood on the regular.”

“So when I say  _ messier _ , you best believe me.” John’s fingers twitched. Maybe it was cruel, asking him not to smoke, but the smell of it was too nauseating to eat through.

Zed nodded. “I could stay at Jim’s for a few days.” She looked at Chas, piercingly. “Or we could find ourselves a case.”

“I’m staying here,” Chas said, ignoring how John started to object before biting the words off. “Someone has to keep an eye on him.”

Zed leaned forward. “Will you be okay?”

John smiled at her, easy and reassuring. “Always, pet.”

Zed stood, apparently satisfied. “I’m going to put the food away. John, are you done?”

John slid his barely-touched plate to her. She picked it up and went into the kitchen.

“John…” Chas started.

John turned toward him, his smile gone thin, sickly and scared. “Don’t start, mate. We had this conversation last year.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it this year.”

John lit a cigarette, apparently unable to help himself. Chas pushed his plate away with a scoff. So much for Thanksgiving.

“I said you could leave if you wanted to.”

“Like that’s going to happen.” Chas kept his voice low, just in case Zed could hear them over the racket she was making in the kitchen. “I know better.”

John rolled his eyes. Big, dramatic, dismissive. “Sure, mate.”

Chas let the matter rest, and got up to join Zed in the kitchen.

-

Chas helped Zed pack an overnight bag. He knew she didn’t really need it—she’d been moving her things from the back of her truck into Jim’s apartment. She even had a toothbrush there, for all the significance of that.

But John was downstairs, setting up for his ritual, blasting the Ramones and in much too good of a mood for someone with lamb blood smeared on one side of his face.

Zed settled back on her heels, sketchbook in one hand, and looked Chas in the eyes. “What exactly is John going to be doing?”

Chas was shaking his head before she’d finished the sentence. “You don’t want or need to know.”

Zed opened her mouth as if to object, then closed it. She put the sketchbook in her bag and zipped it up. “Take care of him?”

“You know I will. Take care of yourself.” 

They walked downstairs together, Chas carrying the bag. John was sitting cross-legged in a circle of candles, intoning in Latin to the beat of  _ Blitzkrieg Bop. _ The blood on his face had dried in streaks. He was shirtless, baring his growing collection of tattoos and scars.

“I’m heading out, Merridew,” Zed called, over the music.

John barely even paused. He opened his eyes, waved to her, and went back to his chanting.

“Merridew?” Chas asked, tossing the bag into the passenger seat and giving Zed a hand up into the truck.

“Jack Merridew, from Lord of the Flies. Smeared blood on his face.”

Chas nodded. If he was remembering high school English with enough clarity, it wasn’t a favorable reference. “Right. Take care, Zed.”

He shut the door for her, and went back into the house. John’s music had moved on to  _ Teenage Lobotomy _ , and the candles around the circle had flared up higher. John was sweating slightly.

Chas got him a glass of ice water, setting it outside the range of the candles’ heat. John would would be dehydrated by the time he finished. That done, he went to find the corner of the library that had fiction in it. Maybe Jasper would have a copy of Lord of the Flies.

-

Chas settled on the couch with the book. It was dog-eared, and there were notes in the margins; probably Liz’s.

Chas could just see John out of the corner of his eye, sitting in his circle, sweat darkening his hair, chanting. He’d be done with the preparation rite soon.

_ Psycho Therapy  _ was playing, making it a little hard to concentrate on reading. Chas used to wonder about the significance of the songs John played, but according to him, punk rock was just a good conduit for magic. Chas could believe that. 

Chas read the first chapter to the sound of 70s rock music. As he was starting to the second,  _ I Wanna Be Sedated _ turned into  _ Bulletproof Heart.  _ That was a bit disorienting. Chas had never thought of John as an MCR fan.

“Thought you weren’t a fan of the new stuff,” Chas called, over the music.

“I am when it sounds good,” John shot back.

“How much longer for the… prep?” Chas hazarded, while he had John’s attention.

John snickered. “Not much longer. It gets pretty easy, when you’ve had as much practice as me.”

Chas could just imagine his filthy grin. He tried to summon a sense of disapproval, but only got as far as fondness. “Get on with it, then.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Chas avoided the urge to throw the book at the back of John’s head, if only because he wanted to keep reading it.

-

The room was sweltering by the time John stopped his chanting. The candles had flared high enough to be genuine fire hazards, but they dimmed to nothing when John stopped the music and stood up.

Chas folded the corner of his page and set the book down. “You okay?”

John picked up the water Chas had left for him and took a sip, then drained the glass. “That was the easy bit,” he croaked, licking his cracked lips. “You sure you want to stick around?”

For a moment, Chas seriously considered it. John had been doing this ritual for years without Chas there.

Clued in by the buzz in his head, Chas looked up. John was staring at him, piercingly. 

“Don’t fuck with my head, John,” Chas said.

“I’m not.”

The problem was, John believed it. The preparation rite had done its work: John’s inhibitions were shot to hell, and the magic came as easy as thinking.

It made him dangerous.

Chas inhaled, exhaled. John was still staring at him, and Chas could  _ see _ the magic burning in his eyes.

Chas wanted to take him in his arms and wipe the sweat from his face, but the ritual didn’t permit tenderness like that.

John had chosen this path, and he would have to deal with the consequences.

Helpless to do any more than observe, Chas followed him upstairs.

“Just going to stare at me?” John asked, stripping out of the rest of his clothes.

“You’re not a bad sight,” Chas replied. It was likely that John wouldn’t remember any of this when he came to in a few days, so Chas could say whatever he wanted. Besides, it was true.

John flashed him a half smile, and climbed into the bath. “Toss my my kit, mate?”

Chas picked up the leather bag from the toilet seat and threw it, underhanded, to John. He watched with mild interest as John prepared the area for the ritual.

Candles, melted on the bottoms to stick to the lip of the bath, then ignited, with John’s cigarette lighter. Herbs dropped to the floor of the bath. An empty ceramic bowl, painted with intricate Hebrew.

When John took the curved ritual knife out of the bag, Chas looked away.

“Can’t stomach it?” John said.

“I’m not leaving,” Chas shot back. “I just don’t want to watch.”

He didn’t want to listen, either, but someone had to take care of John.

Chas had no choice but to listen as John made the first cuts. Chas knew the pattern by heart.

One on the inside of each elbow. One on the right palm. Two above each knee. One on the sole of the foot—dealer’s choice which. John switched over between years. This year it was the left. Eighteen cuts on the torso, between the ribs. Two extra (for luck, according to John,) beneath each collarbone.

John didn’t make a sound. Chas could hear the sound of metal on flesh, and the faint sounds of breath, but nothing else. No cries of pain, no chanting.

Blood dripping into the bowl.

Then the incanting began—a low, humming thrall of a thing. The language, Chas had learned not to ask, wasn’t any human one.

Chas dared to turn his head. John was hunched over forward over the bowl, letting his blood gather in the bowl, rocking back and forth in time with his chanting.

Chas looked away again. He knew what came next.

The lights in the mill house all went out with a  _ crack. _

...That was not what was supposed to happen next.


	2. I hate to speak so free, but you mean nothing to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Purity.
> 
> _(Chapter title from "Despite What You've Been Told" by Two Gallants)_

John was aware of the lights going out.

He was aware of most things, when the barrier between his magic and his mind was torn open.

He was aware of Chas Chandler, standing to attention beside the bathtub, tense with worry and burdened with affection. He was aware of the mill house, and its humming wards. He was aware of the pain of wounds and the dizziness of blood loss.

He was aware of magic.

It was coiled under Chandler’s sternum, bearing up his extra souls. It was woven into the house, into its wards, into almost every object beneath its roof. It was in John’s blood. It burned like the inside of a star.

“John?” Chandler said.

John stood up, stretching his arms over his head, feeling the invigorating burn of the cuts across his body. He could heal them with an inconsequential flick of magic, but the sensation was too appealing.

“ _ John? _ ” Chandler repeated. Insistent, now. Worried. Casting about for a weapon.

John dragged his accent and dialect out of the mire of his internal mindscape and carefully donned them before speaking. 

“It’s all right, Chas.”

“What happened to the lights?”

John imagined a shrug, carelessly deliberate, followed by a faint wince as the movement tugged on the slashes across his ribs. The body moved, as instructed. “Just synchronicity. Don’t worry.”

Chandler narrowed his eyes. “John?”

“That’s my name, last I checked. Don’t wear it out.”

Chandler wasn’t convinced. He was probably the only one John  _ wouldn’t _ be able to fool. John could access the whole of his twin’s memories, but some of the mannerisms were too innate to be faked.

He would have time to learn. Chandler had thirty-odd lives left to wear out.

“What happened?” Chandler’s voice had no rhythm to it, all intent and no consideration. John could feel the suspicion rising in him, poised to strike.

It was a pity, really. John wouldn’t enjoy killing him. He was too much like John’s Chas, if a little brighter.

“Well, the ritual worked.” Bit posh. Damp it down. Working-class. Blue collar.  _ Focus. _ “I feel all shiny inside.” Too genuine. Careful. “And all that rot.”

“That’s not how it usually goes.” 

John thought about the ritual knife in his left hand. It was sharp, but not as sharp as it could be. Neglected, for rituals other than this one.

Still, it would serve.

Chas didn’t even have time to scream.

-

John had never been a very good actor. His twin was—lying became easy when it was so often necessary, but John had no need for it. The truth and synchronicity, combined, were always enough. Even here, it wouldn’t take much effort to enforce his will.

Still, it was best put a personal touch on it.

The end result of his scripting, after a few hours of practice, was relatively impressive.

He pulled up Zed Martin’s number, but didn’t call just yet. He dug down first, past the boundaries of his own control, to where his twin was raging, fighting with all his might.

He’d known this might happen, and he’d still opened himself to John’s purity.

Past the rage was the terror, the blind fear of losing control. It fed up into the anger, predictably unproductive.

Deeper still, as far as John could go without risking his perfect control, the sorrow. The stagnant mire of grief, two parts self-hatred, one part despair, one part greed.

John barely touched it, and found what he needed.

The problem was, he couldn’t kill Zed. Zed had Jim Corrigan, and Corrigan was actually  _ connected _ , so there was no getting away with that. 

But she could be driven away, at least for a time, while John asserted himself.

John reemerged from his subconscious, gasping involuntarily. He let the wellspring of grief he had drawn on take over his breath and his tear ducts, focusing on his script as he waited for Zed to answer her phone.

“John?”

John inhaled. It shuddered, just as intended. “Zed… you might need to stay away a little while longer.”

“What happened?” Zed’s voice ratcheted up with fear.

“It went wrong.” John held his breath, until the exhale burst out like a sob. “Chas, he… I just need you to stay away, Zed. Let me fix this.”

“John…” There was a voice with some music to it. Zed Martin would go far. Not as far as synchronicity, but further than basic feats of empathy. “Just tell me what’s going on, I can try to help…”

John shook his head, enforcing the denial he was projecting. “You can’t help. Even if you could, I don’t… it would hurt you.”

Zed huffed, as petulant as a child. “I’m a big girl, John, I can—”

John let the mask slip. Didn’t his twin have any control over these people? “I said no, Zed!”

Zed went silent on the other end. “If it’s like that, fine. Deal with it yourself.  _ Pendejo. _ ”

Once Zed had hung up in a suitable huff, John incinerated the phone, and went to take a shower.

Chas was waiting for him when he got to the bathroom, blood down his front, but no wound. He was holding the ritual knife. 

John incinerated  _ him _ , too.

That prompted a tug of panic from his twin, before John kicked him back out of feeling range. Interesting, that reaction. Very interesting.

-

John had to eliminate Chandler twice before he managed to pin him in place with a spell. He’d moved on from begging John to stop after the second time he resuscitated, thank God. Yelling threats—mostly about what  _ John _ would do to him, funnily enough—was less emotionally demanding, if similarly annoying.

John gagged him for a breath of peace, and went to meditate. There was work to do, but he needed his thoughts in order first.

In the short term, he needed to take some action regarding the house and its wards. They were getting confused, pricking at the edges of John’s awareness, as if they didn’t recognize him.

According to his twin, with a stab of that murky grief, Jasper was dead. A pity. This one was really a letdown. 

“That’s the difference between us,” John called into the depths of his mind, to where his twin was trapped. “You’re John Constantine, petty dabbler, and I’m the Magus, the Laughing Magician. Don’t worry about your broken world, Sickly Boy. I’ll put it to rights.”


	3. If you could coddle the infection, they can amputate at once

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John fights back.
> 
> (Chapter title from _Mama_ by My Chemical Romance)

John was finding it difficult to hold himself together.

It had been easy enough, originally. Adrenaline and rage had kept him on his metaphorical feet for long enough to see exactly what kind of ends his twin—his fucking  _ parallel universe twin _ —was willing to go to in order to gain control.

God, when this was over, John was sending Chas back to Brooklyn. Or London. Anywhere but here. It wasn’t fair to him.

John lit a metaphorical cigarette, just for something to do with his (metaphorical) hands. He couldn’t lose it now. That was how his twin—he really needed to give the bastard a name, other than his twin, who died in utero, except from the parallel universe where  _ John _ was the one who died, good fucking  _ Christ. _ Shit. Breathe.

Just pick a fucking name. That was half the terror right there, an unnamed foe. Magus, that was the title he’d given himself, this time and the last. Good enough name as any. Magus.

John had to focus. Had to pull himself together, or it would all be over. Magus may not have been John, but he had the same kind of teeth on him. The same selfish pride. Breaking the opponent down was as much of a victory as actually winning.

Sometimes it was the only possible victory.

Christ, bloody buggering  _ Christ. _ Calm down. Calm down, please calm down.

He couldn’t panic. He couldn’t panic, or Magus would win.

Focus.

It was hard to meditate without a body, but John had done it before. This wasn’t quite like astral projecting, but the idea was similar, if a little more confined.

He drew himself in, collecting the fragile threads of his soul from where they’d been tossed around his bloodstream. He wound up the loose pieces, the scattered mess. He’d been careless, at first. Flinging himself every which way, like a desperate amateur. He couldn’t do that again.

_ Focus. _

Magic was almost entirely willpower. Despite how far down Magus had pushed him, John was still there. This was still his world, his body, his head.

He was still John Constantine. Maybe he wasn’t the Laughing bloody Magician, but he wasn’t a two-bit hack, either.

Slowly, once he’d gathered himself up, he reached out again, prodding at the edges of his confinement. Pretty basic possession, with a touch of personal ire.

Stuck up bastard. If he’d done so well with his world, what was he doing in John’s? What could he possibly want?

Quiet. Calm the bloody mind, and all that. Focus.

There had to be a flaw, somewhere. Bloody-minded pricks like Magus always had some kind of blind spot.

What did they have in common? More specifically, where  _ wouldn’t _ Magus look? 

Not anything he was using consciously, which ruled out the eyes and the mouth. Magus favored his left arm—John remembered from the last time he’d met him that Magus had lost his right arm at Newcastle—but that didn’t give John much of an opportunity to act before Magus noticed. 

Not the lungs, either. Magus was pushing down the compulsion John’s body had to smoke with enough conscious effort that he’d notice any prodding John did there.

The heart, maybe. John could squeeze the arteries, give Chas time to do something—give himself time to wrench control back. 

Of course, that had the side effect of potentially stopping his heart. Oh well.

Then came the question of timing. He had to wait until Magus had turned his attention out of his body. The bastard was meditating, whatever that accomplished, so John had to wait.

Stay awake, and wait.

-

How long could someone meditate for?

John had smoked his way through a pack of metaphorical cigarettes, the stubbed-out ends piling up around his metaphorical feet.

He wanted to  _ do _ something. Lashing out at Magus wouldn’t accomplish anything, but it would feel a hell of a lot better than just (metaphorically)  _ sitting _ there, plotting his own (potential) death.

This possession thing was giving him a headache. Metaphorically speaking. Christ.

John was tired. Not metaphorically tired—literally. The stretched thin, ragged exhaustion of too long between places. Like astral projection fatigue, but worse.

John caught himself relaxing. No. No, if he let go, Magus would crush him. His grip on his body was tenuous enough already; he couldn’t risk letting himself slip.

He was swaying on his metaphorical feet, but he’d had bloody worse.

Finally, Magus stood up. John unspooled himself from his self-protective huddle, hovering close enough behind his ocular nerves to get a glimpse of what Magus was seeing.

He was standing by the wall, one palm splayed against the stone, the other tracing symbols in the air.

Bollocks. The wards. There were a lot of things Magus could do if he could manipulate the wards.

Before John had time to wonder what Magus had in mind, Magus answered it for him, prying up John’s memories of—

Shit,  _ no. _

“Arthurian magic?” Magus said, aloud. Through the rush of static in John’s metaphorical hearing, he heard Chas make a sound behind the gag. “Clever, my twin. Clever. Easy enough to block, though… if not reverse.”

No no no no  _ no. _

Magus’ attention was on him, but John didn’t have a choice. He wrapped his consciousness around his own heart and  _ pulled _ with all his strength.

His heart skipped a beat. John pulled again, desperately. 

“What are you  _ doing? _ ” Magus shrieked, through half of John’s mouth.

Like a damaged record. Skip. Skip. Skip.

John, or maybe Magus, groaned in pain.

Skip. Skip. Skip.

Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed John’s name.


	4. would you love me for the hell of it?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John explains, not quite everything, but enough.
> 
> (Chapter title from _If The World Was Ending_ by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels)

Chas had drifted off twice in the chair beside John’s bed before Zed banished him back to his own room.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t take him to a hospital?” Zed asked, not for the first time.

Chas shrugged, helplessly. They really should have—wound care was one thing, a heart attack was another. 

“How would we explain it?” Chas said. It wasn’t much of an excuse, but it was easier than trying to explain that the longer you spent with John Constantine, the more you learned to keep your circle small. The less you trusted anyone.

“Fine.” Zed touched his shoulder. “Get some rest. Maybe a shower.”

Chas nodded. He’d changed his clothes, but there was still blood on his skin, dried in streaks.

The bathroom, he discovered, was a similarly grisly mess. Too wired to sleep, and unwilling to shower if he had to step over half-dried puddles of blood, Chas rolled up his sleeves and started scrubbing.

Why couldn’t whatever possessed John have killed him in a  _ less _ messy way? There was blood on the ceiling, for Christ’s sake.

Chas had just scraped the last of the residue off the walls, chipping the wallpaper in the process, when Zed knocked on the doorframe.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cleaning up?” Chas said, getting down off the toilet seat and scratching his neck sheepishly. “There was blood everywhere.”

“There’s still blood all over  _ you, _ ” Zed pointed out, “and if you don’t want John to think you’re the ghost of fuckups past when he wakes up and sees you, you should really shower.”

“I’m going to.” Chas unbuttoned his flannel. That came off easy, but the t-shirt beneath stuck, in patches, to the blood down his front. Impatiently, he ripped it off over his head. “Fuck!”

Zed approached him, slowly, and rested a hand on his shoulder. She winced, briefly, taking in his rush of emotions. Even buried under exhaustion, it was enough to give her pause. “We couldn’t have known, Chas.”

Chas’ chin dipped toward his chest. “I know we couldn’t have. Doesn’t make it better.”

“Whatever it was that was in him… it knew him. It called me, and I thought it was him.”

Chas took John’s magic kit, bloody ritual knife included, out of the bathtub. He set the former on the floor, and tossed the latter in the sink.

Chas waited until Zed had closed the door behind her and walked away before he finished stripping, turned on the shower, and leaned against the wall, covering his mouth with one palm to muffle a terrified, frantic sob.

-

Chas slept a few fitful hours, woken from an incoherent dream by the sound of arguing from the other room.

He dragged himself out of bed and into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Zed didn’t sound afraid or angry, so it was probably John, and not whoever had been wearing him.

“Chas!” Zed said, as soon as Chas came in, with a little more violence than Chas thought was absolutely necessary.

“What,” Chas sighed.

“Does John have a brother?” Zed asked.

Chas stared at her. “No?”

John glanced between the two of them, a little helplessly. He was shirtless, the blankets pushed down to his knees. There was a first-aid kit open on the dresser, but Zed hadn’t started bandaging the cuts from the ritual. She’d probably meant to, and then been distracted by… whatever conversation this was.

“I don’t  _ have _ a brother,” John explained, “I had a twin who died in utero.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Zed demanded.

“He’s the better version of me,” John explained. “There’s an alternate universe where he survived—why are you looking at me like that?”

Chas sat down on the edge of the bed, pulled one of John’s arms toward him, and started bandaging up the cuts he could reach. “You knew he existed?”

John couldn’t meet his gaze. He looked down at his hands, twisting the edge of the blanket fretfully. “To be fair, mate, I was in my teens and on a drug trip.”

“So, who was he?”

“I call him Magus, which is more of a title, but I can’t very well call him ‘John’. Would get confusing, that.” John cracked a smile, but wilted when the silence persisted. “Tough crowd.”

“He killed me, John,” Chas said, “and according to him, you let him in with that ritual.”

John winced, but didn’t argue. “He wants to let him take over. Something drove him out of his world, and now he’s in this one, bugging me to let him be in charge.”

“How’d he get in your head in the first place?” Zed asked.

“I let him in. Years ago. He offered power, I was sixteen, It seemed like the right call, at the time. Turns out, he meant to take control right there, and I didn’t let him. So he’s been lurking. Waiting for me to give in.”

Chas tried to get his head around that. “And your cleansing ritual… why did that let him through?”

John shrugged. “Who bloody knows. Probably the preparation. Put me off balance, as far as magic goes.”

Chas shut his eyes. “Is he gone now?”

John shrugged. “Banished to the back of me head, at least. And now I know better.”

There was a break in John’s voice, just at the end of the sentence. Just the barest hint of  _ falling apart. _

“John—” Chas started, but John cut him off.

“Jasper had money,” he began, in that wavering voice that Chas never knew how to cope with. “In a few accounts. If you want to move back to Brooklyn, or back across the pond, I can get you set up…”

“I’m not leaving,” Chas said, flatly. “Look, I knew what I was signing up for, John. I’m not bailing out just because you were a bit more personally involved in what happened to me this time.”

“But—” John started, and Chas grabbed his hand, roughly. 

“If I hadn’t stayed, Magus would probably still be in control of you right now. And I’m not risking something like that. Even if it costs me sometimes.” 

Zed leaned over. She reached toward John’s other hand, then thought better of it, and squeezed his knee through the blankets. “This wasn’t your fault, John.”

Maybe it was her tenderness, maybe it was the unspoken  _ for once _ , but John crumbled. His mouth twisted, screwing up and to the side like he’d just bitten down on something sour, and his eyes slammed shut.

Chas reached for him. John avoided his grasp, just for a moment, then fell against his chest, fingers curling into Chas’ t-shirt.

“Chas,” John gasped, already alarmingly close to tears for having seemed so composed a minute before. One hand fumbled upwards, cupping the side of Chas’ neck, thumb grazing across his trachea, where Magus—with John’s hand—had cut him. 

If John were moderately better at this, he would apologize.

If  _ Chas _ were any better at this, he’d expect him to.


End file.
